PRINCIPLE,. ELEMENTS OF CNF

PRINCIPLES ,ELEMENTS OF CNF

1. Flexibity of Form . Creative nonfiction can follow any form -essay ,short story ,even poetry .
           2.Literary Approach to nonfiction .Use of Literary devices like tone, POV,  dialoque,                                  description,flashback ,and forward
   
           3.Self-recovery /Exploration .Creative nonfiction is all about exploring an idea or issue ; self                      discovery and exploration is a result .
 
          4.Personal presence .The writer's voice create an identify -usually themselves (1st person).

          5. Veracity .Conveying the truth ;documentable subjects; in other wordsincluding facts and                       critical analysis.

Elements of Creative Nonfiction

The creative nonfiction writer often incorporates several elements of nonfiction when writing a memoir, personal essay, travel writing, and so on. The following is a brief explanation of the most common elements of nonfiction:

• Fact. The writing must be based on fact, rather than fiction. It cannot be made up.
• Extensive research. The piece of writing is based on primary research, such as an interview or personal experience, and often secondary research, such as gathering information from books, magazines, and newspapers.
• Reportage/reporting. The writer must be able to document events or  personal experiences.
• Personal experience and personal opinion. Often, the writer includes personal experience, feelings, thoughts, and opinions. For instance, when writing a personal essay or memoir.
• Explanation/Exposition. The writer is required to explain the personal experience or topic to the reader.
• Essay format. Creative nonfiction is often written in essay format. Example: Personal Essay, Literary Journalistic essay, brief essay.

 Principles, elements, techniques, and devices

1. 1. Principles, Elements, Techniques, and Devices of Creative Nonfiction Prepared by: Marrianne S. Ledesma, LPT
2. 2. Plot or Plot Structure How to Begin:  Catchy and clever titles have an advantage. Examples: “The Wild Man of Green Swamp” by Maxine Hong Kingston “ The Courage of Turtles” by Edward Hoagland  Titles should give the reader a quick idea of what to expect, without giving away the whole story (Hidalgo, 56-57)
3. 3. The First Paragraph Ways of Writing your First Paragraph for CNF  Passage of Vivid Description  Quotation  List  Dialogue  Little Scene  Anecdote  Question  Striking Statement  Reference to a current event which serves as the context of the action
4. 4. How to End? It is expected that the ending of a creative nonfiction piece is the logical conclusion of the flow of your narrative or the development of your ideas. You must constantly bear in mind that the reader should be left with a sense of completion. However, satisfying the ending does not mean that you need to answer or resolve the issues that you raised in the essay you may even wish to end by suggesting new problems or asking other questions. ( Hidalgo, 109)
5. 5. Character or Characterization Ways Of Revealing Your Characters In A Creative Nonfiction Piece  Direct Description  Action and Reaction  Other Character’s Opinion  Dialogue  Monologue  Focusing on a Character’s Distinct or Idiosyncratic Behavior
6. 6. Point of View “ a good piece of creative nonfiction has a personal voice, a clearly defined point of view, which will reveal itself in the tone, and be presented through scene, summary and description, as it is in fiction. All its strategies are designed to reach out to the readers and draw them in –again, as in fiction- without losing tract of the facts. ( Hidalgo 6) What does it suppose to mean?
7. 7. Approach/Angle First Person Second Person Third Person Point of View OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE The writer’s attitude towards the subject. Tone and Voice
8. 8. Point of View in CNF  First Person Point of View • This is used when you are relating an event that you experienced first hand.  Second Person Point of View • This is used when you decide to write a piece and you want to sound as if you are actually talking or addressing another person, yourself where “you” actually the writer, or something abstract like love, peace or justice or a place or location like the city , the nation, etc.  Third Person Point of View • This is used when you quote what a real person has said which results to “he said/she said” type of narrative or when you are describing someone in your creative nonfiction piece.
9. 9. Let’s Read a CNF Example! The Death of the Moth Virginia Woolf (Aguila et. Al 48-50)
10. 10. Setting and Atmosphere Setting refers to the place, time, where and when an event happens Atmosphere or mood in creative nonfiction refers to the elements that evokes certain feelings or emotions. It is conveyed by the words used to describe the setting or reflected by the way the subject feels or the way he or she acts.
11. 11. According to Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo: “The most successful pieces of creative nonfiction are rich in details. Bare facts are never enough. They need to be fleshed out; they need to be humanized. But besides giving information, details serve other purposes. Details should be accurate and informative first. And then must be suggestive or evocative. The right details arouse emotions, evoke memories, help to produce the right response in your reader. Details are extremely important in evoking a sense of time and place. It must evoke a period as well as location. Descriptive details are of particular importance for travel writing , the point of which , to begin with , to literally transport the reader to the place to which the traveler has been”
12. 12. Let’s Read a CNF Example! Baguio (from Sojourns) Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo (Aguila, Ph.D 55-57)
13. 13. Literary Concerns: Structure, Symbols or Symbolisms, Irony, Figures of Speech

UNDERSTANDING CREATIVE NONFICTION

UNDERSTANDING CREATIVE NONFICTION

What is Creative Nonfiction?

  The words “creative” and “nonfiction” describe the form. The word “creative” refers to the use of literary craft, the techniques fiction writers, playwrights, and poets employ to present nonfiction—factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner. The goal is to make nonfiction stories read like fiction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy.

The word “creative” has been criticized in this context because some people have maintained that being creative means that you pretend or exaggerate or make up facts and embellish details. This is completely incorrect. It is possible to be honest and straightforward and brilliant and creative at the same time.

"Creative” doesn’t mean inventing what didn’t happen, reporting and describing what wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean that the writer has a license to lie. The cardinal rule is clear—and cannot be violated. This is the pledge the writer makes to the reader—the maxim we live by, the anchor of creative nonfiction: “You can’t make this stuff up!” 

Examples of Creative Nonfiction

• "Coney Island at Night," by James Huneker
• "An Experiment in Misery," by Stephen Crane
• "In Mammoth Cave," by John Burroughs
• "Outcasts in Salt Lake City," by James Weldon Johnson
• "Rural Hours," by Susan Fenimore Cooper
• "The San Francisco Earthquake," by Jack London
• "The Watercress Girl," by Henry Mayhew

SIGNIFICANCE IN STUDYING CNF

SIGNIFICANCE IN STUDYING CNF

French advances towards creative writing:
Inspired by the emergence of creative writing courses abroad, the French have also changed their habits and feelings towards writing at the university level. As of 2016, a few Masters programs have opened their doors, as well as a « Doctorat Pratique et Théorie de la Création littéraire et artistique » being created at the Aix-Marseilles University. Thus creative writing is slowly being developed and accepted in French universities.

Creative but not only:
Creative writing is not only a means to help students unleash their creative side and feel more comfortable when writing in and about everyday life, but has also been proven to improve language learning. At our very own university, creative writing has been used as a new approach to mastering a foreign language. For the past eight years, it has been a part of the English studies, implemented by Sara Greaves and Marie-Laure Schultze, both researchers teaching at Aix-Marseille University. Their workshops are designed to offer an alternative method to learning and practicing English by appealing to the student’s imagination and feelings. The dissociation of form and meaning has a way of “revitalizing language relationships” and thus improving writing skills1. By writing in a creative way instead of an academic one, students have to adjust their skills to make the language their own and open themselves to the otherness of the tongue (2015). The creative writing classes taking place at the AMU operate at the nexus between language, literature and translation classes.

Creative writing at an academic level is more than just an asset: it is a flourishing discipline, helping students with their personal writing as well as academic writing, and has also proven to be very effective in language learning, which still has a long way to go and much more to offer.

TESTEMONIO

TESTEMONIO

    Testimonio is generally defined as a first-person narration of socially significant experiences in which the narrative voice is that of a typical or extraordinary witness or protagonist who metonymically represents others who have lived through similar situations and who have rarely given written expression to them.

.Examples <Biography of a Runaway Slave 

Miguel Barnet

Nick Hill, tr.

This is arguably where the testimonial novel was born. Barnet, an anthropologist, interviewed Esteban Montejo in his 103rd year, a man who had lived in Cuba both as a slave and a fugitive slave and who fought in the island’s War of Independence against Spain. The resulting book didn’t fit easily into any existing category of literature or anthropology and came to be known as testimonio.

Rigoberta Menchú 

Ann Wright, tr.

Doubtless the best-known and also most-contested example of testimonio, this work conveys the harrowing facts of being indigenous in Guatemala. A point of entry into testimonial narrative, it is also worth returning to, as it suggests several stories at once—including how the testimonial novel can be riven in two, with the story told by the speaker and the one rendered a text by another ultimately incompatible. The famous controversy that looms over this work, pitting Menchú’s memory against a few facts dug up by a dogged anthropologist, should not distract the reader. 

 

BLOGS

BLOGS

    A blog can be your online journal, for instance, where you will express your thoughts and feelings and share them with the world. It can be anything you want it to be, but the key to its success is providing real value to your readers using a friendly and conversational tone of voice while remaining consistent.

EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS BLOGS

1. The Geelong College Middle School (note, some of these are public and some are password protected)
2. Jurupa Hills High School Photography
3. SCHS Open Studio — high school ceramics.

TRUE NARRATIVES

      TRUE NARRATIVES

     A true narrative essay, remember is a story, based on actual events. ... The form of the true narrative is undefined; the purpose in telling the story is to express a point or observation

       EXAMPLES ABOUT A TRUE NARRATIVES

Friendship Friendship, defined from Webster’s Dictionary as, the state of being friends, or a friendly feeling. The second definition states a friend as an ally, supporter, or sympathizer. Many people accept the dictionary’s definition of friendship as "the quality or condition of having a personal attachment to another by feelings of affection or personal regard." My personal definition of what friendship is, is a feeling or emotion expressed in such a way that another feels wanted and important.

picture of true narratives

REFLECTION ESSAY

REFLECTION ESSAY

   <A reflective essay is a paper that entails a writer to expound about their personal experience and relate to the audience appropriately through writing. The experience matters along with personal ideas, opinions and even feelings about the situation and how the situation affected the author or others.

EXAMPLES OF REFLECTION ESSAY

My Earliest Memory

Recalling one’s earliest memories is no joke. We are not computers and knowing the exact sequence of one’s memories is no small task—in fact, I think it is impossible. Also, we are easily affected by seeing media about our childhood and confusing that with memories. I have seen my tapes of me at around 3 years old and whatnot, and sometimes I mistakenly think memories of these tapes are original memories. Anyways, I think I recalled my first memory, and there were no photographs or videos taken at the time.

I believe I was in first grade (“Mechanicsburg Area School District”). The room was bright and full of children. We had made paper airplanes and were throwing them around the room, seeing whose airplanes would go the furthest—or not thinking at all and just throwing them around. Laughter, and the loud noises of children yelling and making funny noises. That is about it.

However, if I garner memories from media and the facts of life, I can proclaim a new first memory. But if we take “childhood amnesia” into account, it is not possible for me to have a real long-term memory about myself before the age of 7. Early in our childhood, the structures of our brain that create and sustain memories are not so well developed (Gammon, Kate). There are many theories as to why the brain develops in this way, but I think it has to do with not remembering all the falls, accidents, and other issues in one’s childhood so one can grow up mentally stable.

Anyways, I know my first word was “choo choo,” because I lived next to a train station until I was three years old. I know that I used to go on the tire swing outside of our rickety house, and swing on it in the first three years of my life. I remember hitting my head as I crashed into my twin brother when running around the house—but that was after three years of age, when we moved to another house. However, I know of these happenings only from watching home videos.

It is clear that we forget more and more of our childhood as we age. For me to retain that around 7 years old I was throwing around paper airplanes in my first grade class is not uncommon: most adults cannot remember much before 5-7 years of age (Gammon, Kate). But I think I remembered this moment because it was very happy. Research shows that memories are more likely to stay if they are linked with strong emotions. I always enjoyed throwing around paper airplanes, but throwing them around with a bunch of classmates probably was an ecstatic moment.

Why are our first memories important? Not only are they novelties, but I think they are illustrative of who we are. I consider myself a generally positive person, and my first memory was happy. I think how we remember our childhood can be a key to knowing who we are at the moment. Countless people will tell you that the events that happened in their childhood affected them for the rest of their lives. These imprints on their lives are so significant and often out of their control. As Jess Cotton from The School of Life puts it, “We can tell that our imbalances date from the past because they reflect the way of thinking and instincts of the children we once were. Without anything pejorative being meant by this, our way of being unbalanced tends towards a fundamental immaturity, bearing the marks of what was once a young person’s attempt to grapple with something utterly beyond their capacities. For example, when they suffer at the hands of an adult, children almost invariably take what happens to them as a reflection of something that must be very wrong with them” (The School of Life).

I recalled my first memory, and it was a happy one about throwing paper airplanes in my first grade class. It seems I generally generated good memories during childhood. I believe this prompted me to have a positive adult life. I wish I could remember more before this memory, but due to “childhood amnesia,” it is not possible.